Dancing Democracy

Why should our children bend the knee in that fastidious and servile dance, the Minuet, or twirl in the mazes of the false sentimentality of the Waltz? Rather let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance the language of our Pioneers, the Fortitude of our heroes, the Justice, Kindness, Purity of our statesmen, and all the inspired love and tenderness of our Mothers. When the American children dance in this way, it will make of them beautiful beings, worthy of the name of the Greatest Democracy.

That will be America Dancing.

-Isadora Duncan, American dancer & choreographer

Poverty, Education, Eco-Justice and More

The Winter 09 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy focuses on The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education. Mohammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and founder of the Grameen Bank, has written the prologue.

Poverty is not created by poor people; rather, it is created by institutions and policies that we have built up. In order to tackle poverty, we have to go back to the drawing board, and redesign our concepts, our policies, our institutions. My experience has taught me that poor people are as hard working, as talented as any other human beings. They are not lazy or unskilled or inefficient, as people tend to think. They just never get the opportunity to tap their own potential. An effective poverty reduction program is one that allows the poor person to unleash his or her potential. Microcredit is one way of doing that.

So is education. Yunus speaks about our acceptance of the idea that some people will always be poor. He argues:

What we want and how we get it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create a world in accordance with our frame of mind. We need to invent ways to change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our way of thinking. This is where education, one that encourages us to challenge conventional wisdom, can try to play a significant role. I believe even the biggest problem can be cracked by a small, well-designed intervention. That is where our creativity comes in.

Creativity does not only help us to invent solutions or well-designed interventions. The most important part of creativity is the important part it plays in our ability to imagine a different world--to imagine, to hope, and to believe that another way of being with people and with the world can exist. (This is why fostering imagination and creativity--via the arts, especially--is so important...rather than only encouraging and rewarding rigid adherence to existing routines and structures.)

Other interesting stuff:

In "Poverty and Class: Discussing the Undiscussible," John Korsmos encourages dialogue and listening to understand the experience of struggling community members. He asks: "What would happen if we knew each other?"

C.A. Bowers talks about "Rethinking Social Justice Issues Within an Eco-Justice Conceptual and Moral Framework," commenting on unspoken cultural commons that need to be addressed within curricula:

The starting point in a commons-oriented curriculum is to have students conduct a survey of their local cultural commons, as well as the aspects of the larger cultural commons that they have a right (in spite of past exclusions) to participate in. The survey should involve learning who the elders and mentors are, who the keepers of the community memory are, what forms of cultural commons activities exist—such as playing chess, painting, writing poetry, musical performances, gardening, working with wood and metal, volunteerism, and political action groups. In a word, the survey should cover the activities and relationships within the community that are less reliant upon a money economy—and that lead to the development of skills and interests that contribute to a less damaging ecological footprint.

And much more..

Herbert Kohl on Surveillance and Education

Herbert Kohl has a great article entitled "The Educational Panopticon" in Teachers College Journal. You must be a subscriber to read the article, but here are some of the key parts:

People who insult and denigrate teachers by forcing scripted curriculum on them are perfectly aware that they are forcing teachers to act against their conscience and students to close down their minds. What must be raised and answered for is the moral cost of creating joyless schools that resemble panopticons.

I find it painful to write about education these days. I began teaching in 1962 and after about one semester realized that I would have to become engaged in school reform if I was to teach well and be of use to my students. This engagement has continued for forty-six years and yet I still encounter schools that are as repressive and ineffective as they were forty-six years ago. Sometimes I even encounter situations, which are even more depressing that any I remember.

Recently a friend and I visited a middle school in the Bay Area. It was lunchtime and the students were lined up outside of the cafeteria. I noticed that they all had their arms folded over their chests with their hands clutching their shoulders. My friend got really upset and suggested we leave immediately. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that the lunch line was identical to lunch lines she observed when she visited prisons. The inmates were required to hold their arms that way to prevent them from touching each other or carrying anything into the dining hall. Later I asked a teacher at the school about the rationale for having the students line up in that way, and he gave me the same reason. According to him, the students, all of whom were either black or Latino, had to be kept from touching each other or fooling around on the lunch line and besides, he commented, “it’s also good education for their future.”

I observed a similar phenomenon in an elementary school a few weeks ago, only this time it was a class of second graders required to walk to the playground with their arms folded across their chests. The rationale I was given by an administrator was the same though without the cynical aside. In both instances the official reason for the policy was that it was part of the school’s zero tolerance policy.

The majority of schools don’t resort to such methods of behavioral control and do sanction some informal movement of youngsters from place to place. However, the notion of control and surveillance is pervasive these days. I believe that the consequence of scripted curriculum, teacher accountability, continuous monitoring of student performance, high stakes testing, and punishment for not reaching external standards is that schools become educational panopticons, that is, total control and surveillance communities dedicated to undermining the imagination, creativity, intelligence, and autonomy of students and teachers.

“Panopticon” was the name given by the British philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham to a prison he designed during the 1780s. Essentially it consisted of prisoners’ cells built in a circle around a surveillance core in the middle. The idea was to provide complete monitoring of prisoners at all times by guards within the core. Prisoners were unable to see into the core and therefore could not actually tell whether they were being observed or not. The motive for this was to create an environment where the prisoners would internalize and accept the idea of total and continuous surveillance whether or not it was actually happening. It was an attempt to use the physical environment as an instrument of intimidation and mind control.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault extended the use of “panopticon” to characterize social institutions such as prisons, hospitals, mental asylums, and schools which institutionalize constant surveillance and exert mind control, often without the knowledge or awareness of the people being controlled. When I talk about an educational panopticon I mean a system in which teachers and students are under constant scrutiny, allowed no choice over what is learned or taught, evaluated continuously, and punished for what is considered inadequate performance. In this context students and teachers are forced to live in a constant state of anxiety, self-doubt, wariness, anomie, and even suppressed rage.

Consider the following characteristics of schooling that I mentioned above: scripted curriculum, teacher accountability, continuous monitoring of student performance, high stakes testing, and punishment for not meeting external standards. Scripted curriculum turns teachers into mechanical delivery systems. Most teachers I know try to revolt against them, but they have to face what are called “the Open Court police” – people who wander the halls of schools checking that teachers are on exactly the mandated page, asking set questions rather than discussing ideas or texts, and accepting only the answers provided by the teachers’ booklet. Though those monitors obviously can’t check all the classes at all the times they induce a state of anxiety since they can enter any classroom at any time without even knocking. This aspect of the panopticon contributes to the erosion of self-respect and pride in one’s work by treating teachers as objects with no independent educational knowledge and judgment of their own.


The irony is that even with the imposition of so-called “teacher-proof” curriculum, teachers are evaluated on the effectiveness of their student’s performance on tests relating to material they have no control over. No one evaluates Open Court or other such curriculum when students fail. It is the powerless “proofed” teachers who take the hit. This is morally reprehensible and yet the question of the values underlying this kind of teaching and evaluation is neglected when experts discuss educational issues.

Teachers under surveillance are also the agents of surveillance since they are expected to do continuous monitoring of their students’ progress. Continuous monitoring implies that learning takes place in measurable increments and that constant testing somehow contributes to enhanced performance. Whether it does or not, it reinforces educational practice which has no space for conversation, exploration, or the personalization of learning. The classroom becomes a humanly impoverished environment, a sanitized place where students’ personality, charm, and ingenuity have no place. Morally it contributes to depriving the young of opportunities for the development of their minds. Fortunately there are many subversive teachers who work in the service of their students and according to their own conscience rather than submit to the coercive education they are expected to provide.

Add high stakes testing and school-wide punishment for failure and you have even greater weapons of control and coercion. Student and parent anxiety is increased; teachers, being judged themselves by the results of the tests, have incentives to press and pressure their students to perform or even in some cases encourage them to be absent on testing days. Because of no tolerance and no exceptions policies, students who just can’t do well because of disabilities that are no fault of their own, or students who don’t speak English, are forced to take tests they know they will fail. Setting students up to fail is simply immoral, and yet there is surprisingly little outcry about this attack on these young people’s very being.

When I bring up these moral issues to educators who consider themselves reformers in the spirit of No Child Left Behind, they usually acknowledge these “unfortunate” things can happen but that they are unintended consequences of a program designed to get every child performing to high standards. That is not the case. These alienating immoral practices are intended consequences. People who make and administer high stakes tests know the moral and personal costs of subjecting all students to them. People who insult and denigrate teachers by forcing scripted curriculum on them are perfectly aware that they are forcing teachers to act against their conscience and students to close down their minds. What must be raised and answered for is the moral cost of creating joyless schools that resemble panopticons.

Inputs and Outputs: Education and its maintenance of the social order

News from the West's great post, The Education System Was Designed To Keep Us Uneducated and Docile, traces the roots of the US system and its quest to maintain social order and dominant power structures. While I love John Dewey, the post points out even Dewey's references to students as products to be molded within a specific social order. John Taylor Gatto, retired NYC teacher and former NYC and NYS Teacher of the Year, unearths these problems in his book The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling. (Full text available for free online.)

Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'"

While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process."

In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day.

Tea Time with Dr. Greg

I recently had the chance to meet with Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, and founder of the Central Asia Institute. You can find a full reflection on The NYU Reynolds Program blog.

With a meek, modest, humble nature, Greg Mortenson radiates with a passion for education that bubbles just below the surface. Perhaps it's this mild and humble manner that allows Mortenson to so gently observe and respect the communities with which he has worked.

Mortenson's Central Asia Institute has the unique posture of working with communities to build ideal schools where much of the educational philosophy can be imagined, rather than fitted within an existing bureaucratic structure. While Mortenson could have taken any approach to education, CAI appears to have done the opposite of what is happening in the U.S. As hyper-standardization and rigid structure appear to be at the forefront of "education reform" in the States, Mortenson's organization builds community-owned schools in which communities have actual decision-making power, where spending is transparent. There is a contract with communities in which they decide how the schools will be governed.

Mortenson knows about the importance of listening. Asking: What are your community's priorities? Acknowledging the lived expertise of community members. While we privilege certain types of education and expression--for example written expression--these don't define education, knowledge, or intelligence. The ability to "read the world" can be just as powerful. Community members are experts in their lived experiences and can contribute to prioritizing and planning.

Why can't education be like this in the States? Do we think we are too advanced for an education that promotes community and peace? How can we re-imagine education?

Horizontal Violence, School Discipline, and Restorative Justice

I recently saw the movie, The Class, a French fictional film (in documentary style) that depicts the classroom of a white male teacher in the city of Paris. While there is not a singular plot line, one student that the movie follows is Souleymane. After several incidents at school, for which he recieves "punishment," he is eventually expelled. The teachers knew that the approach wasn't working and didn't seem to believe that expulsion would solve the problem either. But they had given up--they had to do something, it was the principle of the matter, and the protocol was expulsion.

Why do we expect punishment to work? Those students who are afraid of being reprimanded or punished typically do not act out in the first place. Those that are not afraid of punishment will continue to act out. I hate to compare schools to prisons, but sometimes they aren't that different. So I'll refer to research that shows that harsher punishments for juvenile offenders (trying minors as adults) do not deter youth from reoffending, in fact, it does the opposite:

A 1996 Florida study authored by Northeastern University researcher Donna Bishop also found that juveniles transferred to the criminal system were not less likely to reoffend, but in fact often had higher rates of recidivism. This research compared the recidivism rates of 2,738 juvenile offenders transferred to criminal court in Florida with a matched sample of nontransferred juveniles. Bishop and her colleagues found that although juveniles tried as adults were more likely to be incarcerated, and incarcerated for longer than those who remained in the juvenile system, they also had a higher recidivism rate. Within two years, they were more likely to reoffend, to reoffend earlier, to commit more subsequent offenses, and to commit more serious subsequent offenses than juveniles retained in the juvenile system. The authors concluded that:

"The findings suggest that transfer made little difference in deterring youths from reoffending. Adult processing of youths in criminal court actually increases recidivism rather than [having] any incapacitative effects on crime control and community protection."

Following the same offenders six years after their initial study, the researchers again found higher recidivism rates for most juveniles transferred to criminal court. The exceptions were property felons, who were somewhat less likely to reoffend than those tried in juvenile court, although those who did reoffend did so sooner and more often that those tried in juvenile court.

At one point in the film, a student describes teacher discipline as "revenge." Isn't this sometimes the case? I'm reminded of a scene in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The local Christmas tree vendor has a yearly Christmas Eve ritual in which he throws left over Christmas trees at children. If the children withstand the throw, they get to keep the tree. If they fall, no tree. As he's about to throw the largest tree at two small children, the man ponders "Why don't I just give'em the tree?" He eventually concludes that he isn't "big enough" to do something of that nature: "'Oh, what the hell! Them two kids is gotta live in this world! They got to get used to it. They got to learn to give and take punishment. And by Jesus, it ain't give but take, take, take all the time in this God-damned world.' As he threw the tree with all his strength, his heart wailed out, "It's a God-damned, rotton, lousy world!"

Why are students acting out? One possibility might be to consider the notion of horizontal violence or self-depriciation. (This could also be a reason for the terrible treatment of students by some teachers as well...) In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire says:

Submerged in reality, the oppressed cannot perceive clearly the “order” which serves the interests of the oppressors whose image they have internalized. Chafing under the restrictions of this order, they often manifest a type of horizontal violence, striking out at their own comrades for the pettiest reasons.

The colonized man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people. This is the period when the niggers beat each other up, and the police and magistrates do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing waves of crime in North Africa. ... While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native; for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother.

It is possible that in this behavior they are once more manifesting their duality. Because the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades they are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.

Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything — that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive — that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness.

In the report, "Teachers Talk: School Culture, Safety and Human Rights," the authors discuss the pitfalls of reactionary and punitive discipline and offer recommendations.

"Teachers Talk" proposes a human rights framework as an approach to reforming discipline and improving school climate. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, an important human rights treaty that is widely adopted throughout the world, recognizes discipline as part of an educational process to develop the social skills of students, encourage learning, increase school attendance, and protect the dignity and safety of the child.

In surveys and focus groups, New York City teachers call for policies and practices that protect these basic human rights standards and reflect a holistic approach to improving safety. Teachers call for smaller classes, more engaging curriculum, more access to guidance counselors and social workers, classroom management and conflict resolution training, mediation programs and restorative practices.

The report highlights positive models being used in three New York City public schools - Eastside Community High School in Manhattan, Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx and the James Baldwin School in Manhattan. At Eastside Community High School, for example, the 100% RESPECT Campaign involves students and staff in a process to discuss and define what respect means in their community. Six months after the campaign was implemented in the middle school grades, suspensions dropped by 45%.

More Resources:

• RestorativeJustice.org
• Safer Saner Schools
• Dignity in Schools
• Transforming Conflict

Demasking Stereotypes Workshop at The Brecht Forum

The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory Presents: Demasking Stereotypes
A Two-day Workshop in Healing through Storytelling

Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and
Sunday, March 8 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm

Facilitated by Potri Ranka Manis

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street
New York, New York 10014

A practical workshop combining the Paulo Freire methodology and storytelling to look at how people are stereotyped, how such stereotyping affects people's behavior and psyches, and how people can be healed from the damage such stereotyping does.

While there is no formal application, PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. Please register on line using the form to your right, or call TOPLAB at (212)924-1858 (leave an email address) or email toplab@toplab.org.

Potri Ranka Manis is a member of and facilitator with the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory and is the Artistic Director of Kinding Sindaw, ) a Filipino indigenous dance, drama and martial arts ensemble. She created and choreographed several Kinding Sindaw dance dramas and has trained since childhood in all the traditional dance, music, and martial art forms of the Maranao people of the Philippines. She is an award winning poet and playwright, and has performed throughout the Philippines, Middle East, Hong Kong and the United States.

Diane Ravitch on the (Not) New Education Approach

NYU Professor and education historian Diane Ravitch comments on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (via Politico). I, like Ravitch, wish Obama had selected Linda Darling Hammond...

But along comes Arne Duncan, our new Secretary of Education, and everything he has said to date might have just as well been said by Bush's Secretary Margaret Spellings. Duncan paid his visit to New York City and toured a charter school, not a regular public school. He declared that the nation's schools need more testing, as though we don't have enough information already to act on our problems. He declared his support for charter schools, where only 2% of the nation's children are enrolled.

The one educator close to Obama who actually has experience in the schools--his chief policy advisor Linda Darling-Hammond--was demonized by the new breed of non-educators and their media flacks, and she has returned to Stanford University. There was no room apparently in this administration for someone who had been deeply involved in school reform for many years, not as an entrepreneur or a think-tank expert, but as an educator.

It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in.

A Workshop with Cecily O'Neill - Great Video

Here's a great video on teachers.tv of Cecily O'Neill's work. Enjoy!

"What fun it is to learn in a more playful way," -O'Neill says. "Drama is pretending. It is essentially playful."

Process drama is a process-based dramatic art that engages both teachers and students in roles that create and explore various situations. Teachers are encouraged to go where the kids want to go.

O'Neill reminds teachers not to take on the most powerful role and not to go overboard in their believability/acting expertise (in order to keep from intimidating the students), along with other useful tips. Books on the topic.

Emotions & The Classroom

A new university study explores whether or not students comprehend the affects of positive and negative feelings on school performance. What's interesting is that students appear to understand the relationship between negative (sad, bad) feelings and poor performance, but the relationship between positive feelings and positive performance is less clear. Do Children Understand How Feelings Affect School Performance?

They found that children of all ages understood that negative emotional and physical states would lead to poorer school performance. The fact that young children knew that negative emotions could cause poor school performance was especially surprising, since parents and teachers often focus on the physical side of getting ready for school (hence the advice to get lots of rest or eat a good breakfast), and rarely talk about the emotional side (for example, advising children to try not to feel sad). The researchers also found that children understood that levels of interest, effort, and classroom noise would affect performance.

When it came to positive feelings, however, only 7-year-olds recognized, as adults do, that positive feelings could improve school performance. For the younger children, seeing the tie between positive emotions and school performance was difficult; it was easier for them to grasp how positive physical feelings would lead to doing well in school.

The older children also had a better understanding of why emotions and physical states affect school performance. In explaining their judgments, they described how such feelings influence concentration, attention, the brain, and other aspects of thinking.

"Changes in emotional and physiological states are an inevitable part of children's everyday experience in the school setting," according to Jennifer Amsterlaw, research scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, who led the study. "If children know how and why these experiences affect them, they will be better able to prepare for and control their ultimate impact on school performance."

The classroom is not a neutral space. We can't say that we can only focus on what happens within the classroom. If negative feelings affect performance, we must address feelings in the classroom too. "Try not to feel sad" is not enough. Perhaps it begins with addressing feelings and what they are caused by. Next, it's allowing students to discuss and understand that they can interpret situations in different ways. It is okay to feel and to feel negative feelings. Still, we can choose to let our feelings affect our performance or not.

One interesting piece on the subject is The Philosophy of the Limit and Emotions in the Classroom by Debra Shogan, University of Alberta.

In their paper, "Caring for the Emotions: Toward a More Balanced Schooling," Clive Beck and Clare Madott Kosnick emphasize the connection between a "rich emotionality" and well-being. They argue that this rich emotionality depends upon the creation of classrooms and schools which are "genuine communities" in which students and teachers are able to experience emotional living. Genuine communities are ones in which conversation is encouraged, there is opportunity for open celebration of what makes students happy or joyful, and in which there is tenderness and hence security. Each, say Beck and Madott Kosnick, contributes to friendship and mutuality. Beck and Madott Kosnick do not detail how conversation, celebration, and security might be accomplished, referring instead to Nel Noddings's The Challenge to Care in Schools and to Jane Roland Martin's The Schoolhome. Beck and Madott Kosnick's concern is to highlight what they believe to be the effects of emotionality in the classroom as well as conditions which will make emotionality possible.

"Remember": A Sixth Grade Poem

Today, I stumbled across this poem, by a student in Astoria, Queens, on the NYC Department of Ed's website.

"Remember," Katherine Huynh, Sixth Grade, PS 122Q

Remember when we were small,
when we haven't met at all?
When we didn't worry about other things,
That you'd think of as too much?
When we didn't worry about homework?
When we didn't worry about tests?
When we had no troubles?
When we thought none of pain
No worries here to taint us,
I wished it was that way we stayed.

Jeahn Clare's I Wasn't Born A Mermaid

I was recently introduced to the work of artist Jeahn Clare. Clare suffered a spinal chord injury at the age of 20. Currently, she works as a theatre teaching artist and is affiliated with VSA Arts.

I was moved by an excerpt from her play, I Wasn't Born A Mermaid.

A colleague once asked, “Do you consider yourself an artist, a woman artist, or a disabled artist?" My immediate response is, "Which day? What time?" I am a theatre artist; woman; person with a disability. None of these qualities encompasses the sum of my being; yet each expresses something true about me. And Survivor; I didn’t know that prior to my injury. I do now; I value that. I’m not saying I would have chosen spinal cord injury as a path to personal growth, but the depth it has brought to my life is undeniable. After all the pondering, praying, reading, therapy, weeping, whining, blah-blah-blah — one day I bite into a strawberry, and I get it: Utter certainty that this Life is no accident. My injury may have been an accident — but that strawberry is no accident! And I believe that living is something I can do from the seat of a wheelchair.

I wasn’t born a mermaid. I evolved. It was a dramatic moment, not quite a fall from grace, but a fall nonetheless. But then, that’s another story. This is a tale of a different sort, a transformative tale — transformation not of the outside-in, but of the inside-out.

VSA will feature the work of 16 artists with disabilities at The Armory Show in New York City from March 5-8.

Also, check out Axis Dance Company, a contemporary dance ensemble that utilizes beautifully physically integrated dance (dancers with and without disabilities). You can find a short video of the group here.

A Sense of Direction: Connections to Teaching

I recently read "Relation to Actors" from  William Ball's book, A Sense of Direction. So many of his comments on directing are applicable to teachers or facilitators in any setting. Here are a few thoughts:

Fear
The rehearsal process, like the classroom space, needs to be a safe space to encourage risk. I remember being afraid of directors and constantly trying to please them. I remember them stopping me in the middle of what I was doing and saying “Why are you doing that?!” This type of interaction makes an actor (or a student) incredibly self conscious and unwilling to try new things. How can we expect students to take risks when they are constantly trying to please the director or the teacher and be “right?”

Failure
Failure is certainly a part of the creative process. Ball argues, “It is important to “Fail Big!!” Failing truly is a part of growth and learning; yet, within our society, failing is stigmatized. We are obsessed with being correct and this is typically what we reward. In working with students or actors, we must reward the willingness to take risks as well. Risk taking is so much more difficult than just finding the right answer. I recently spoke with a business consultant who is a serial entrepreneur with several successful start-ups. Someone asked what his strategy was. He replied, “fail fast,” put all of your cards on the table and don’t hide anything. We often hide our ideas, our thoughts, and feelings, but we are only waiting. Why not try it all?

Praise
I agree with Ball on his notion that praise (genuine praise) is important in the creative process. I know that I seek praise in my work as most people probably do. I like Ball’s suggestions on the general and gracious praise that can be useful for actors (and students), such as “It’s a pleasure to work with you.” Being gracious for people’s presence, time, and willingness to take risks is easy and important, but often overlooked.

Ball comments that “the artist is a person whose buisiness in life is to praise. Artists discover the wonders of nature and we call attention to those wonders.” He continues, “An artist is someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the Universe.” It is interesting to think about the importance of looking deeply into what is praiseworthy and what is beautiful. Developing this constant awareness makes experiences infinitely richer. We often look for what is missing or what is wrong before asking what is beautiful. I like Ball’s advice:

If you have difficulty finding something praiseworthy, imagine that it doesn’t exist. One of my favorite expressions, and one that has pulled me out of many a difficulty, is this: ‘A thing becomes beautiful because of the possibility of its absence.’ When we imagine the absence of something, it becomes extremely beautiful.

A simple expression that he suggests: “How beautiful that is.” 

A couple other short thoughts:

• Touching: Often times, we are afraid of touch. I know that I am sometimes uncomfortable with it. Making a small effort to touch everyone—on the arm, the hand, or with a hug can make connections stronger and acknowledge everyone in the space.
• Interruption: “To interrupt someone who is trying to express himself is unforgivable. It doesn’t make any difference what he is saying.” To interrupt is not to acknowledge the importance of sharing, risk taking.

New Approach to School Discipline: Online Chat

Live Online Chat:

A New Approach to School Discipline
When: Tuesday, February 3, 2pm Eastern time
Where: http://www.edweek-chat.org

Frequent visits to the principal's office, detentions, suspensions, and expulsions are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don't abide by school rules. But according to Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child, they are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied. In a new book, Lost at School, Mr. Greene presents an alternative for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn't effective at addressing these difficulties. When adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and begin to teach kids skills in increments they can handle, children are able to overcome their obstacles. When that happens, the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes, and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced, Mr. Greene says.

About the Guests:

Ross W. Greene is associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the originator of a model of care called Collaborative Problem Solving. Mr. Greene lectures extensively both in North America and abroad. His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

Ray Grogran is assistant principal at Sanford Junior High School in Sanford, Maine, where the Collaborative Problem Solving approach has been implemented since January 2008.

Submit questions in advance by clicking here.

Creativity, Imagination, & Schools

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." --Picasso

I recently came back to Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk, Do schools kill creativity? 

It's really a beautiful and challenging piece. Robinson speaks about the future of education and education's purpose to take us into a future that is unknown. He criticizes public education for squandering kids' tremendous talents and poses that creativity is as important in education as literacy is. Creativity should be treated with the same emphasis.

He also touches on the importance of making and learning from mistakes. Those who are afraid to be wrong don't try new things. Currently, we teach our kids to fear mistakes. We search for the "right" and "best" answers in the classroom and stifle discussion where there are no clear cut answers. One strategy that I think works as an excellent tool for discussion is the use of Visual Thinking Strategies.

Visual Thinking Strategies are typically used within the visual arts to facilitate the discussion of a piece of art. Here's a summary of the technique from the VTS website:

Teachers are asked to use three open-ended questions:

• What’s going on in this picture?
  
• What do you see that makes you say that?
  
• What more can we find?

3 Facilitation Techniques:

• Paraphrase comments neutrally.
  
• Point at the area being discussed.
  
• Link contrasting and complementary comments.

Students are asked to:

• Look carefully at works of art.
  
• Talk about what they observe.
  
• Back up their ideas with evidence.
  
• Listen to and consider the views of others.
  
• Discuss many possible interpretations.

This technique is useful for a range of discussions--from visual art, to language arts, theatre, music, and dance. 

Still, the arts are at the bottom of the totem pole in schools, with theatre and dance holding a lower status than music and visual art. Why is this? Are we afraid of the use of the body? Robinson comments that public education is concerned with the waist up (Or even the neck up.) Why shouldn't children use their bodies to dance or express themselves through drama? There are people who must move to think--people who think through movement and expression. 

Public education meets the needs of industrialism. The most useful subjects for school are the ones that are most useful for work. What if you are good at the things at school that are not valued? 

We often say lets use hip hop to teach literacy and math, but why not use math and literacy to teach hip hop?

New Issue of Rethinking Schools

The winter issue of Rethinking Schools is now available. Interesting articles include: commentary on American Girls money making machine, paying for student performance, and Tom Farley's inside look at the testing industry: "A Test Scorer's Lament." Here's an excerpt:

In the hot sun, at a table beside a hotel pool, two men and a woman drink icy cocktails to celebrate the successful completion of a four-week scoring project. The hotel manager brings a phone to their table. "Call for you," he says to the woman, whose face blanches when the home office tells her that another dozen tests have been found.

"I know," the woman says, "someone has to score them. OK, read them to me over the phone." The woman turns the phone's speaker on, and she and the men listen to student responses read by a squeaky-voiced secretary several thousand miles away. One of the men waves to the bartender to bring another round, and with drinks but not rubrics in their hands the two men and one woman score each student response via the telephone. When the voice on the phone goes silent after reading each response, the woman looks at the number of fingers the men hold in the air.

"Three," the woman says into the phone. "That's a three."

This goes on for an hour and two rounds of drinks.

A project manager for a test-scoring company addresses the supervisors hired to manage the scoring of a project. The project is not producing the results expected, to the dismay of the test-scoring company and its client, a state department of education. The project manager has been trying to calm the concerned employees, but she's losing patience. She's obviously had enough.

"I don't care if the scores are right," the project manager snarls. "They want lower scores, and we'll give them lower scores."

7th Grade Inaugural Thoughts

Seventh grade students at Harlem Success Academy about Inauguration Day via The Huffington Post. Alexis Sumpter said:

Standing there. Words of wisdom coming out his mouth. I can't express in words how happy I am. I am staring at the first African American president. My eyes are in a blur and want to release what they have been holding back. I love when he recited the words, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking America." It made me reflect because I am still in the process of trying to pick myself back up. I felt a force of energy rush out of my body. I felt as if I could be anything and anyone. I was feeding upon every word he said because it was true. I can heal without focusing on the negative, but by focusing on the positive.

Democracy and Education

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy." -John Dewey

Building an Arts Activism Curriculum

I've been working for the past several months to build a core curriculum for youth about the concept of arts activism. It's been trickier than I thought. 

The first question: What is arts activism? The simplest way I can begin to define it is the communication/expression of a message through an artistic medium to create or inspire change. How can we engage students in this concept--I am hesitant to simply provide a definition. Shouldn't this come from the participants themselves? If so, how?

Defining or introducing artistic mediums is even more difficult. In one lesson, is it possible to both introduce the concept of theatre/drama and also frame it from an arts activism perspective (doing the same for dance and music as well?)

What is Theatre? 

Augusto Boal defines theatre as "the art of looking at ourselves." But this isn't how theatre or drama is typically perceived or defined. Drama is rooted in the Greek "to do" or "to act." Drama utilizes body and voice to express. Theatre (performative--or not) can also focus on the realm of storytelling or voice. Whose stories are told? Whose are left out? It should also be important to stress that drama can be performative or non-performative (Perhaps this is important and true for all of the arts?)

Dance and music are even more difficult (because I focus on Educational Theatre).

What is Dance?

Dance is words, poetry, and emotion in action. It is communication, imitation, or expression through physical movement, using space and time.

What is Music?

Jean-Jacques Nattiez defines music as "sound through time."

I have also been gathering examples to introduce arts activism via the mediums of theatre/drama, music, and dance.

Currently, focusing on:

• Theatre: What I Want My Words to Do to You. Eve Ensler's work with incarcerated women.
  
• Dance: Pearl Primus's The Negro Speaks of Rivers. (Movement interpretation of Langston Hughes' poem)
  
• Music: Pete Seeger's Take It From Dr. King. (video here, lyrics here)
  

Call for Submissions: Rethinking Social Justice in Education

The A.R.E. (Association of Raza Educators) 3rd Annual Conference is accepting proposals. The theme is "Rethinking Social Justice in Education: Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar Con El Pueblo"

February 28, 2009
Santee Education Complex
1921 Maple Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011

The theme of the 3rd Annual A.R.E. conference, "Rethinking Social Justice: *Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar con el Pueblo*," engages with the problematic of how social justice movements can build sustainable communities of resistance. What is the role of educators and students in building community and organization with the people, *el pueblo*? How can educators build relations of solidarity with *el pueblo* within/against the colonial State?

Speakers will include:

• Omali Yeshitela, Chairman, African People's Socialist Party
  
• Donaldo Macedo, Professor, University of Massachusetts
  
• Sakeenah Shabazz, President, African Revolution Student Organization